The Technical Minds Behind Prince Caspian

Posted March 26, 2008 4:22 pm by fantasia_kitty

First up, NarniaWebber Reepi obtained an interview with Carlos Pedroza who works for the special effects company The Third Floor.

Reepi: What were you exactly doing when working for Narnia?CP: The work I did on Prince Caspian was in a sequence called “River God” sequence. Parts of it show up in the trailer. I work at a previsualization company called The Third Floor, and I worked on this sequence at the “Post-viz” stage, where we take the previsualization and match it up with the actual shot footage which was shot against bluescreen. It is a hybrid between previsualization and final vfx shot. This allows the final vfx artists to do their effects the way the shot was meant to be.

Reepi: What was it like?CP: I liked it. I was fortunate enough to be working with the most talented people in the industry on that show at The Third Floor (that is the name of the previs company where I work).

Reepi: What was your biggest challenge when working on it?CP: This was a bit more complicated than regular “all CG” previs, since we had to first matchmove the film plates with bluescreen and composite them on the original previs.

Reepi: Are there any stories regarding your work on “Narnia” you can tell us?CP: I can’t think of any. All I can say is that the work was a lot of fun.

Reepi: What do you think about the movie “Narnia”?CP: I like everything about it. I loved the first one and I hope Prince Caspian can be on the same level of storytelling, character development, artistic design, etc, as the first one.

You can visit The Third Floor’s website here. They don’t seem to have any new shots from Prince Caspian (or from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which they are also working on), but there may be a tiny snippet in their Reel footage about 15 seconds from the end. It looks like a Telmarine getting snagged by a tree, but we’re not sure. It could just be our wishful thinking! UPDATE: Never mind, we’ve been told it’s a shot from Eragon.

Thanks Reepi and Carlos for the interview!

Next up, NarniaWebber Dooby writes to let us know that the staff at Rising Sun (Adelaide Australia VFX company) were up until 2:00 am on Wednesday to meet a deadline for Prince Caspian. We’re not sure exactly what this deadline was for, but most likely it was some overflow work from the other companies. You can see the article on the Rising Sun website here.

The next several links are from various companies and/or people who worked on Prince Caspian and have posted stories and pictures of their experiences on set.

“John Mahaffie (Second Unit Director) and Tim Coddington (Production Manager) put their faith in Team Velocity for their cable suspended camera flying work on Chronicles of Narnia (Prince Caspian). The set was a large meadow outside of Prague. The shots were originally designed as 2D requiring two different setups occupying different geography in the meadow dictating a shooting schedule break to accommodate rig relocation. John and Milan knew we had the ability and equipment to fly their camera in 3D and they could see that 3D flight would give them the most flexibility creatively as well as logistically, having complete freedom to change the direction of camera flight based on direction of light etc. Tim and the Producers could also see the advantages in both creativity and logistics, so they asked us to build a 3D rig. We brought in four large cranes and positioned them in the four corners of the meadow to suspend our ‘Vector-Cam’ computer controlled camera flying system to create what we believe to be one of the world’s largest 3D vector rigs.”

Filming the Charging Telmarines

From Team Velocity:

Read the rest of the story on Team Velocity’s website here. Thanks icarus!

From A•R•G•O: “Not very many people may know that in the latest film, Prince Caspian’s knights are wearing suits of armor that came from the workshops of Czech armorers. And how did the local Czech production of the metal armor for the movie get handled? We coordinated the work of approximately ten workshops that were contracted by our agency to produce the chain mail and several hundred helmets, gauntlets and other pieces of armor that were used in the production. Before the pieces produced were handed over to the stunt team, we professionally tested the equipment under realistic conditions. In this way, we were always able to immediately find out which armor designs made the movement of the stuntmen difficult and which designs made it easier to complete the stunts.”

Read the rest of this interview on A•R•G•O’s website here. You can also see some of their weaponry and armor here. Thanks icarus!

The last two are personal websites that Reepi ran across that feature concept art for both The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian.

Aaron Sims is the artist who did the concept art drawings of the Wer-Wolf, the Hag, and the Satyrs. We’ve seen most of these before, but this version of the Hag is slightly different from the first one. You can visit Aaron Sims’ website here.

Concept Art of a Hag by Aaron Sims

And last but not least is Henrik Tamm’s website. Henrik Tamm did concept sketches and artwork for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and his website features dozens of pieces from the movie. Check out his work here.

Concept Art of Cair Paravel by Henrik Tamm

Once again, thank you to all of the sleuths who helped us put this story together!